The McCarthy-era witch hunts marked the culmination of an anticommunist crusade launched after the First World War. With Bolshevism triumphant in Russia and public discontent shaking the United ...
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The McCarthy-era witch hunts marked the culmination of an anticommunist crusade launched after the First World War. With Bolshevism triumphant in Russia and public discontent shaking the United States, conservatives at every level of government and business created a network dedicated to sweeping away the “spider web” of radicalism they saw threatening the nation. This book shines a light on right-wing activities during the interwar period. Conservatives, eager to dispel communism's appeal to the working class, railed against a supposed Soviet-directed conspiracy composed of socialists, trade unions, peace and civil liberties groups, feminists, liberals, aliens, and Jews. The rhetoric and power of anticommunism made for devastating weapons in a systematic war for control of the country against progressive causes. But, as the book shows, the term “spider web” far more accurately described the anticommunist movement than it did the makeup and operations of international communism. The book details how anticommunist myths and propaganda influenced mainstream politics in America, and how its ongoing efforts paved the way for the McCarthyite Fifties—and augured the conservative backlash that would one day transform American politics.Less

Spider Web : The Birth of American Anticommunism

Nick Fischer

Published in print: 2016-05-01

The McCarthy-era witch hunts marked the culmination of an anticommunist crusade launched after the First World War. With Bolshevism triumphant in Russia and public discontent shaking the United States, conservatives at every level of government and business created a network dedicated to sweeping away the “spider web” of radicalism they saw threatening the nation. This book shines a light on right-wing activities during the interwar period. Conservatives, eager to dispel communism's appeal to the working class, railed against a supposed Soviet-directed conspiracy composed of socialists, trade unions, peace and civil liberties groups, feminists, liberals, aliens, and Jews. The rhetoric and power of anticommunism made for devastating weapons in a systematic war for control of the country against progressive causes. But, as the book shows, the term “spider web” far more accurately described the anticommunist movement than it did the makeup and operations of international communism. The book details how anticommunist myths and propaganda influenced mainstream politics in America, and how its ongoing efforts paved the way for the McCarthyite Fifties—and augured the conservative backlash that would one day transform American politics.

This introductory chapter analyzes how conflicting impulses for loyalty and liberty shaped the politics of countersubversion between World War I and the McCarthy era. By examining the ways this ...
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This introductory chapter analyzes how conflicting impulses for loyalty and liberty shaped the politics of countersubversion between World War I and the McCarthy era. By examining the ways this intellectual problem manifested in various historical contexts, the chapter uncovers a history of fits and starts rather than simple, linear progression: waves of growth in political policing followed by undercurrents of reform. The contradictory effort to retain historic freedoms while simultaneously limiting them is what gave American countersubversion its distinctively American character: populist, legalistic, voluble, and partisan. The chapter also seeks to explain how a country with a long-standing hostility to the centralization of power, and a strong disposition to associate activist government with tyranny, gradually reconciled itself to a domestic security state.Less

Introduction

Alex Goodall

Published in print: 2013-12-01

This introductory chapter analyzes how conflicting impulses for loyalty and liberty shaped the politics of countersubversion between World War I and the McCarthy era. By examining the ways this intellectual problem manifested in various historical contexts, the chapter uncovers a history of fits and starts rather than simple, linear progression: waves of growth in political policing followed by undercurrents of reform. The contradictory effort to retain historic freedoms while simultaneously limiting them is what gave American countersubversion its distinctively American character: populist, legalistic, voluble, and partisan. The chapter also seeks to explain how a country with a long-standing hostility to the centralization of power, and a strong disposition to associate activist government with tyranny, gradually reconciled itself to a domestic security state.

This chapter focuses on how the Palmer Raids of the winter of 1919–20 were the most draconian single instance of federal repression in the United States' peacetime history. Nothing in the McCarthy ...
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This chapter focuses on how the Palmer Raids of the winter of 1919–20 were the most draconian single instance of federal repression in the United States' peacetime history. Nothing in the McCarthy era can compare to the mass arrests and beatings, arbitrary incarcerations, and summary deportations that took place in dozens of cities across the nation. Capping off a year of industrial crisis, foreign insecurity, and political conflict, they helped solidify the divisions of the war years, institutionalizing them in an underground communist movement on one side and new patriotic organizations on the other. Given the power of the repressive politics that arised between 1917 and 1920, it is a surprising and problematic fact that the national Republican administrations of the 1920s saw no new countersubversive policies developed.Less

Divided Loyalties : Countersubversion in the 1920s

Alex Goodall

Published in print: 2013-12-01

This chapter focuses on how the Palmer Raids of the winter of 1919–20 were the most draconian single instance of federal repression in the United States' peacetime history. Nothing in the McCarthy era can compare to the mass arrests and beatings, arbitrary incarcerations, and summary deportations that took place in dozens of cities across the nation. Capping off a year of industrial crisis, foreign insecurity, and political conflict, they helped solidify the divisions of the war years, institutionalizing them in an underground communist movement on one side and new patriotic organizations on the other. Given the power of the repressive politics that arised between 1917 and 1920, it is a surprising and problematic fact that the national Republican administrations of the 1920s saw no new countersubversive policies developed.